A Case for Staying in Iraq

by Marie

Or when you can’t beat them, join them.

Bu$hCo is never going to be honest about why we’re in Iraq and that they never had any intention of leaving. Their wet dream is that Iraq will become a peaceful oasis for permanent US military facilities and US oil company operations. An American foothold in the Mid-East from which the US will control the whole region.

The mushy middle in America (combining the arrogance of US power and might from the right and the most naïve sense of a liberal bleeding heart into gobbledygook worse and more dangerous than anything either the right or left espouses) believes that dropping bombs on innocent people and occupying their country by force will make life better for those people. They don’t know anything about the history, culture or economy of the occupied country, but they are sure that they know how to make everything all right. How to make everything all right, how long it will take and how much it will cost is a mystery to them. This is the segment in American society that runs the most on blind faith in the power and goodness of America.

A rational analysis of US foreign policy, based on evidence, facts and logic, is rejected by two-thirds of Americans. They have either never seen a US military operation that they didn’t love or buy into the need for one so easily that for all practical purposes they are indistinguishable from the war-hawks. Those of us with immense sympathy for those who pay the price of US war-mongering and detest the squandering of US resources on mostly useless military junk are in the minority. Have been the minority for decades and maybe will remain the minority forever. At a minimum, it’s not likely to change in my lifetime. All we’re going to see is that power in this country will be tossed back and forth between the rightwing and the mushy middle. Thus the US will remain in Iraq for a long time to come, and the only open question is which group will be in the WH when the music stops and gets saddled with the “failure” to win in Iraq. If it’s the GOP, they will be hobbled for a couple of years. If it’s the DEM, they could well be turned in political pariahs for a few decades. (I’m not prescient enough to be able to define what will stop the music and when. Will there be enough volunteers to staff the military “stay the course?” If not, a draft or leave will be the only options. When Americans get a look at the real price tag of this occupation, will they demand that we get out? Or will it be some combination of the insurgents kicking our butts and the Iraq government ordering us to leave?)

Iraq was always what I have said was a quagmire foretold. Unfortunately, few people comprehend the definition of quagmire and couldn’t see it coming. What I failed to see coming was the degree to which the ineptness of Bush/Cheney would so quickly trickle down throughout every federal agency. For over twenty years, I have worked with and for a high percentage of Republicans and almost every one of them was totally incompetent. The more of them around, particularly in positions of authority, the higher the operating costs and the poorer the operating results. When operations blow up (as they always do when Republicans are in control), like all those dimwits from McNamara through Rummy and Bremer, they say, “Who knew?” (Total bullshit, of course.)

If I were powerful and stupid enough to lead the US to invade and occupy a country like Iraq, I wouldn’t have managed the operation as Bu$hCo has. However, the outcome would not have differed much from where we are today. Therefore, it is meaningless to critique the specifics of how Bu$hCo has managed the war and occupation or use it as a test of their competence. What is much more telling is how costly the operation has been and to mask the true cost of it, how much they have chintzed out on properly equipping the troops and replacing the military equipment and vehicles that are being destroyed. Is further chintzing out on caring for the injured soldiers that have returned from the theater. They are deferring so many costs that it will be decades before we discover just how much we have spent. Essentially the US military has been eating its seed potatoes. (Managed exactly the way Republicans operate businesses in the private sector.)

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the longer the we remain bogged down in Iraq, the weaker we will get. If the government of Iran were smart, they would lie low for right now and secretly feed the Iraqi insurgents as much as possible. Why bother making a bunch of noise about acquiring nukes to prevent the US from attacking and invading them when day by day such an action becomes less and less likely (in spite of the desires of Bu$hCo) because popular sentiment in the US for it is sinking faster than GWB’s approval ratings and the US military doesn’t have the capacity to invade another country larger than Grenada. However, the US still has lots of bombs, and nothing will stop us from using them against Iran if they continue to alienate their European neighbors.

The best news is that Bu$hCo is so incompetent that they cannot multitask. Remember back to early 2001 when Bu$hCo was already bombing Iraq and challenging China when that US spy plane made an emergency landing there? N. Korea has become almost as forgotten as Osama bin Laden. While the NSA is busy collecting so much raw data that they couldn’t analyze it in a couple of centuries, they don’t have the resources to pay attention to anything happening south of the border. For the first time in like forever, Latin and South America is practically free of US meddling in their domestic affairs. Freer to symbolically spit on Bush than they were fifty years ago to actually spit on Nixon. Unlike Nixon that could carry on the Cold War and expand a war in Vietnam into Cambodia and still have resources around to facilitate a coup in Chile, Bu$hCo has nothing left for South America. Freedom is on the march all right, but it’s not in Iraq. It’s in South America.

The countries in South America lag far behind much of the world in terms of economic development and democratic institutions. They don’t have a talent pool of potential leaders as wise as Allende. Chavez and Lula are definitely second-rate, but still so much better than most of the rightwing, US sponsored dictators they usually get that they may not be a bad first step if they can remain unencumbered by overt and covert US military intervention and destructive financial intervention through US backed organizations like the World Bank. Their window of opportunity will last as long as the US remains consumed by Iraq and becomes evermore more dependent on credit from around the world. The longer that window remains open, the greater their opportunity for success.

Oh, how nice it will be to be labeled a “true patriot” as I begin marching and chanting “Stay the course,” “Winning in Iraq is the only option,” “Borrow and spend more and more.” Hell, if I could, I would vote to keep GWB in the WH for life. With any luck, a few years from now, I won’t be filling out an absentee ballot in some frozen tundra to the north of the US but in a warm sunny climate to the south. Now, whatever did I do with that box of Spanish language tapes that I bought (and never opened) in a moment self improvement madness a couple of decades ago?